Memorable Performances — Jeanne Eagels in THE LETTER (1929)

If you have five minutes to spare and want to see something remarkable, check out Jeanne Eagels in this last scene from THE LETTER (1929). It’s an incredible and eccentric performance — she looks like she is about to come apart before our eyes. She is playing opposite Reginald Owen, who is stiff as a corpse, but she still manages to interact with him and play off of him.

Jeanne Eagels only made a few movies. A couple of very early silents that are lost. Then a very good movie called MAN, WOMAN AND SIN that does exist, but is tangled in some kind of legal limbo is therefore never seen. And then two talkies, only one of which, THE LETTER, is extant. She was the premiere stage star of her era. And she also had a serious drug and alcohol problem — and died just a few months after making this movie.

Years later, Hollywood cast Kim Novak to play her in a biopic, and I can’t think of anyone whose essence
was more unlike Jeanne Eagels than Novak.

Anyway, this is a foretaste of something I’m doing for Tuesday, on the most memorable performances in movies.

If you start watching the clip, watch the whole thing. Because if you watch 15 seconds, you might say, oh, this is over-acting. Well it IS stagy, but the psychological intricacy and truth of it is apparent when you watch it to the end. This is a character she’s creating, and it’s pretty amazing.

What a loss. Eagels was 39 when she died, and if she’d just managed to hold it together for another five years, there would be another 10 or 12 movies for us to compare this to.